When you got a coyote or coyotes killing your calves, or beaver leaving punji stakes around the pond your kids or grandkids swim and fish in, you get back to me on that matt. Animals do need killed at times. even the cute ones

This animal rights disease is completely out of control. I am sick of it. Problem animals need killing. When trapping isnt done because there is no money the problems explode. Trust me. There wont be many trappers trapping this season. Look at convention numbers if you dont believe me. Sure a few guys will set a few traps and fewer still will run a line, but harvest of coyotes for example will be down 90% over three seasons back. 10% of trappers kill 90% of the animals. that 10% aint gonna do that this year.

So problem animals will be killed, often for pay, and the dead animals tossed in the feedlot dead pile, or buried, or disposed of in some other fashion. It NEEDS to be done. So Matt you and your like minded bone headed buddies need to gather around a tree and take turns hugging it while you sing Kum By Ya till you feel better.

If you want to promote trapping and fur harvest tell the truth. You make money and solve human animal problems. Its not done for sport.

I believe he said tops $20? We’ll see. I’m waiting another month or so to get the better pelts, besides this one off I nailed a week ago. If I needed cash in hand, I’d be doing something else in my spare time….lol.

In the south, trapping beaver is about like trapping barn rats. Generally most are caught for the damage they cause. I don't skin barn rats ever but I will skin beaver for the pelt if the market is right. $3 beaver aren't worth skinning but the farmers, land owners, and yes even animal lovers they still need them gone. That's the real reason you're there to catch them anyways.

loosanarrow, staton and clifton have it right !
Do the rest of ya give flies and cockroaches a proper burial when you wack one ?
Dignity and respect .... is a 2 way street
Flies, cockroaches and beavers have none for the human.

Every time somebody post on here how fun trapping is they give the anti's all the ammo they need. They really hate trapping for fun.

I have fun. I can’t apologize for that. My landowners begged me to trap problem animals this year. I won’t apologize for that either. Their farms are their livelihood.

Well put Danny !

Funny stuff, the MOST i ever got for a put up beaver was 14.00! You guy's lived in the south you would of hung up your traps decade's ago i guess, most down here here did after the '87 crash. But on the bright side those crooked fur buyer's no longer exist around here!

X2! Also, just like some other States, our turkey population is plummeting. One of the reasons, not the only one I know, is predation. All the nest raiders have been left unchecked for a while as most trappers aren't going after them and there aren't as many coon hunters anymore, also the leases are a problem.

I love to eat groundhogs and coon but I can only eat so many. So, to help manage the predators so we have a good hunting and trapping population of critters, sometimes things like what Danny said, happen. There's nothing wrong with that imo.

Ok so lets compare the past 20 years and see what that argument has done for trapping in general. What I see is the loss of trapping rights in California, cage trapping only in WA, CO, and some other states, and if we go global, the market for fur continues to shrink. Trapper numbers arent increasing by any real margins, statistically all these years are more or less part of the all time low average.

I see how the majority of people react today to trapping and I hate it. I also despise wasting food just because not enough money can be made. I can win over 75% of the population that dont like trapping with my argument, the other argument as shown above has lost time after time and continues to lose. The convention numbers suck because there is a clear lack of strategy and no benefit to the average trapper. The real truth is that trappers in general have a bad argument when it comes to trying to maintain, protect or even get additional rights back. We could absolutely make fur prices go back up, but we want to use the same old argument about supply and demand instead of taking real action. Accuse me all you want of being bone headed, but it wasnt my argument that has been losing trapping rights, fur sales the past 20 years.

Stop digging fella.

You're talking to people all over north America and most are like my state, you can't sell the meat if you wanted. There are people who consider trapping a sport, and people who consider trapping a business. Even our state tosses nuisance animals that they dispatch unless it's big game.

If I remember right from the afwa survey of the general public, the general public supports adc trapping by a majority. That won't help the price of fur though.

The way its going to be is a $20 dollar TOP, so that is a blanket beaver no damage the right color and also prime. That would buy about 4 gals of gas sorry not going to happen for me. Sounds dismal on coyotes and nothing else mentioned very selective basically no market.

Danvee,
That $20 top price is NOT for a "no damage blanket beaver"...that's for the largest size beaver skint and frozen for the hatter market......damage isn't much of a concern to GFW.

My point is really that $20 tops is below cost of production for beavers in my area. I assume the hat makers are turning a profit, and I would hope GF is turning a profit. So should the folks producing the fur take a loss? That just does not seem fair or reasonable.

Actually though, it would not matter if beavers were a $100 AVERAGE because in Indiana if a nuisance control operator is being paid to remove an animal, no part of that animal may be retained for more than 48 hours. Does not matter if it is during open fur harvest season or not. The exception, which was amended just a few years ago, is that the meat of the animal may be properly tagged and retained for GIFTING to someone for HUMAN CONSUMPTION only. No animal food, nothing but the meat for human consumption, and gifted only.

Once the water hits 40 degrees in the fall (any day now) I plug in my chest freezer and save the smaller ones for gifting to a small but growing number of people who eat them. That is at my expense to run the freezer, I can not accept payment of any kind. To be safe, I make sure to damage the fur enough that it would be considered unusable in the fur market. Remember, if I did skin them and sell the fur, I would be breaking the law.

When weather is warm and the water is over 40 degrees, I am not comfortable giving people bloated or tainted beavers to eat. So I do what I am allowed to do - and what the weather allows me to do - in terms of salvaging the resources. But even if that law did not exist, I will not lose money to supply am industry that is turning a profit. I would likely drink beer and see how fat I can get instead, as suggested in a previous post.

I mean I guess I could refuse payment for removed nuisance beavers during the regular fur trapping season and sell the fur for maybe $10 average, castors another $8 or so average, and meat for maybe another $5 average. But $23 average is still below cost of production. I might, in different circumstances, be willing to get out and satisfy need for adventure (I’m already fat enough) while losing money on each beaver, but that would be on my terms and only as many as my wife would let me lose money to catch.

And MattLA, you are just dead wrong about winning people to favor trapping. Not sure where you get that 75% number, but I do I often hear people say how thankful they are that I show up and kill beaver with traps. In fact they pay me to do it. So it is 100% in favor, and they tell their friends, and people see the water recede from their crops and backyard…. Try to get them to pay you to trap so you can use “bones for tools” or whatever you said.

And to 080808, it is not providing “ignorant ammo talk for the antis” at all. Im following the law, and I am making a lot of people very happy to see me and my truckload of traps. What will end trapping as much as anything is prices below cost of production.

Clappy Hands Clappy Hands! Very well said, especially the last two paragraphs. Some pretty twisted laws over there apparently but clappy hands none the less!

State trappers association is working on getting the law changed so we can keep the animals during open trapping season.
It is a twisted law. Hopefully it will change soon.

I thought briefly that I should start a thread and not compromise this one. Sorry SW, but I'm going to let it fly. I truly hope I don't get banned or another Vacation lol, I do truly love this site. Another fur buyer report, big shocker.

I became a member here all but 7 years ago but learked for years. I can remember wonderful rhetoric between Waveslider and Foxcatcher, Flyin Flinn and the world and so on. What I don't recall is how a lot of the newbies are now.

I think there's a lot on here that started out like me. I was and still am the only trapper in my family. I started in the 70's and taught myself to catch critters and would peddle my bike to the local fur buyer with coons and rats tied together in twine around my neck. They had a pot belly stove that the old timers would sit around and play checkers and talk.

99% of them would not help me at all when I ask as a kid. They seen it as food off their table and now, in retrospect, I finally get it. I see so many newbie post now that to me are ones who got through the cracks somehow, but are anti's, digging for things. I reckon I just became a curmudgeon.

We could absolutely make fur prices go back up? How do we do that?